Research Question: How effective are state standardized tests?
Author: Madeline Mucci
Standardized Testing as an Assault on Humanism and Critical Thinking in Education.
This article is about the origins of standardized testing and its relation to the No Child Left Behind act and the Race to the Top act. It shows the progression of the American focus on teaching to the test and racing to receive government funding after the implementation of these acts and that these ideas inspired more of a push for success on tests that would help move students up and earn the school and teachers money. Tests are now used to evaluate student success, teacher success, school success, and state success, but all of this pressure comes down on the students and teachers and the value of learning itself is being undermined.
I found this article extremely interesting. The beginning of it talks about how intelligence tests were first used to determine the value of members of the army, and that soldiers were actually sent away because they didn’t score well enough on such crude and early versions of evaluation. I think this is a fantastic connection to the way students’ intelligence is determined by exams and is just as blasphemous. The article explained very simply and understandably how and why tests have become as important as they are now. The end of it mentioned that people and schools should value learning and being able to think for oneself and problem-solve over this centralized rush for power and money and using children to get there.
Fostering Reading Excellence at Every Level of School through Reading Clinics
This text is about the fact that the increasing importance of standardized tests is ignoring the fact that the student body of America is becoming more and more diverse and developing needs that an education system as power hungry as ours is ignoring. One of the biggest reasons there are problems with testing and student success in general is that there is a huge amount of students who cannot read as well as they should be able to. The article claims that there aren’t exams that assess literacy- only intelligence, and teachers aren’t and cant implement programs and lessons that improve reading skills because they don’t have time around common core and test practice to do so, which causes lessons to be strictly run by teachers with little student involvement. There is a call in this article for reading clinics at all levels. They would help improve students’ sense of self, grades, and success on testing, which seems like the most important incentive for our current system.
This article posed a suggestion I have never heard of or considered- reading clinics. Most suggestions insist on straying from testing altogether, but this suggests an idea that would both help students in almost every aspect of life, and please test-makers and evaluators along the way. It’s a great way to work with the current power struggle we have going on but still prepare students for future in the real world once the testing ends (if it ever does.) I really enjoyed article and agreed with its refreshing ideas.
Diane Kern and Lynne Derbyshire: Test scores should inform, not punish students
This op-ed discusses the fact that state standardized tests do far more harm than good. It speaks specifically of Rhode Island, and mentions that the state doesn’t even have a curriculum that aligns with what students are being tested for and must do well on to graduate high school- the NECAP. So this is a high-stakes test that in many ways controls a teenager’s future, but the school they rely on to help them succeed isn’t even teaching to this test. Since Rhode Island students have done so much more poorly than neighboring states, it can be decided that the NECAP isn’t even a fair or smart test because it produces such outlier results.
This article was very agreeable for many reasons. First, it discusses a specific state, which always helps with understanding the topic and opinions. Secondly, it is an opinion piece based on facts and opinions that are so valid they can be classified as facts: the tests and those who implement them are equally drastically flawed. I think this article is very smart and should catch a lot of attention.
Author: Madeline Mucci
Standardized Testing as an Assault on Humanism and Critical Thinking in Education.
This article is about the origins of standardized testing and its relation to the No Child Left Behind act and the Race to the Top act. It shows the progression of the American focus on teaching to the test and racing to receive government funding after the implementation of these acts and that these ideas inspired more of a push for success on tests that would help move students up and earn the school and teachers money. Tests are now used to evaluate student success, teacher success, school success, and state success, but all of this pressure comes down on the students and teachers and the value of learning itself is being undermined.
I found this article extremely interesting. The beginning of it talks about how intelligence tests were first used to determine the value of members of the army, and that soldiers were actually sent away because they didn’t score well enough on such crude and early versions of evaluation. I think this is a fantastic connection to the way students’ intelligence is determined by exams and is just as blasphemous. The article explained very simply and understandably how and why tests have become as important as they are now. The end of it mentioned that people and schools should value learning and being able to think for oneself and problem-solve over this centralized rush for power and money and using children to get there.
Fostering Reading Excellence at Every Level of School through Reading Clinics
This text is about the fact that the increasing importance of standardized tests is ignoring the fact that the student body of America is becoming more and more diverse and developing needs that an education system as power hungry as ours is ignoring. One of the biggest reasons there are problems with testing and student success in general is that there is a huge amount of students who cannot read as well as they should be able to. The article claims that there aren’t exams that assess literacy- only intelligence, and teachers aren’t and cant implement programs and lessons that improve reading skills because they don’t have time around common core and test practice to do so, which causes lessons to be strictly run by teachers with little student involvement. There is a call in this article for reading clinics at all levels. They would help improve students’ sense of self, grades, and success on testing, which seems like the most important incentive for our current system.
This article posed a suggestion I have never heard of or considered- reading clinics. Most suggestions insist on straying from testing altogether, but this suggests an idea that would both help students in almost every aspect of life, and please test-makers and evaluators along the way. It’s a great way to work with the current power struggle we have going on but still prepare students for future in the real world once the testing ends (if it ever does.) I really enjoyed article and agreed with its refreshing ideas.
Diane Kern and Lynne Derbyshire: Test scores should inform, not punish students
This op-ed discusses the fact that state standardized tests do far more harm than good. It speaks specifically of Rhode Island, and mentions that the state doesn’t even have a curriculum that aligns with what students are being tested for and must do well on to graduate high school- the NECAP. So this is a high-stakes test that in many ways controls a teenager’s future, but the school they rely on to help them succeed isn’t even teaching to this test. Since Rhode Island students have done so much more poorly than neighboring states, it can be decided that the NECAP isn’t even a fair or smart test because it produces such outlier results.
This article was very agreeable for many reasons. First, it discusses a specific state, which always helps with understanding the topic and opinions. Secondly, it is an opinion piece based on facts and opinions that are so valid they can be classified as facts: the tests and those who implement them are equally drastically flawed. I think this article is very smart and should catch a lot of attention.